And I know that I'm finally ready to trust him with the weight of what I've been carrying.
The road stretches ahead of us, dark and uncertain, but for the first time in months, I'm not afraid of where it leads.Because I'm not traveling alone anymore.The road curves ahead of us, and I feel Nate's hand tighten around mine, anchor and promise all at once.
Whatever happens next, we'll face it together.
And maybe that's all any of us can ask for—someone willing to sit with us in our brokenness and see beauty in the pieces that remain.
Always,I think, remembering Nate's promise.
Always.
CHAPTER28
FUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT
NATE
We don’t talkfor the first twenty minutes.The car hums while the radio tries to do the heavy lifting.Rain Cityby Turin Brakes plays first, then23by Jimmy Eat World.The music fills the air between us, but it doesn’t cut the tension.
Doesn’t even dent it.
I keep looking at Nora, trying to read her, but she’s gripping the wheel like she’s steering through fog thick enough to drown in.Her eyes don’t leave the road.Her jaw hasn’t relaxed once.
“So, uh…” I try.
She doesn’t bite, doesn’t even look at me.
Doesn’t even flinch.
I shut up because what the hell am I supposed to say?
She asked me to come, told me she had something to show me, but gave me nothing else.Just that look—the one that saystrust me even if this feels like a mistake.
The highway looks familiar and foreign all at once.My stomach drops when I recognize the stretch of road ahead.
A year.
A whole year since I’ve been here.And then I see it—the curve, the replaced guardrail, the repaved asphalt that still looks wrong in all the ways that matter.
“Nora.”My throat tightens on the word.“What are we doing here?”
She doesn’t answer.Just slows down, pulls over, kills the engine.
Then she gets out.
I stay in the car longer than I should, watching her through the windshield as she walks toward the spot that changed everything.The place where I almost lost her.The place I still see in nightmares.
I force myself out of the car.My legs feel like they’re made of wet cement.The air tastes like memory—burnt rubber, fire, fear.
She kneels down in the gravel, her fingers brushing the ground like she’s searching for a ghost.
And the ghosts hit me all at once.
The fire.
The petrol.
Jay screaming,“Move, Nate.Now, or she won’t make it!”
